


Tipping Point

by orphan_account



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 3x08 spoilers, F/M, Hydra!Will, anti-will daniels, honestly? this is ridiculous, post-3x08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 07:25:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5239730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-3x08. </p><p>Will Daniels was not an unwitting sacrifice in Hydra's plan, and Ward and Gideon have captured Fitz to re-open the portal in their efforts to release Maveth onto Earth. </p><p>Jemma isn't all that surprised that this is what it comes down to: her, Daisy, Ward, and Fitz. The original Bus team, broken into shards with new names and ghosts. </p><p>She'd wanted to kill Ward, for what he'd done to their team and especially to Fitz. That's nothing compared to what she feels for Will Daniels now. It has to be her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tipping Point

**Author's Note:**

> Contains spoilers/speculation!! 
> 
> Full disclosure; this is RIDICULOUS and so dramatic, but I just had to get it out because I had this image in my head of Jemma screaming "WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM? GIVE HIM BACK!" the way that she had about the sun. I could't get it out, so this is not the most sophisticated fic, nor is it the most artful speculation. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it anyway :)

“You’ve accounted for nearly everything,” Giden Malick sneers from across the room. “Except, Dr. Simmons, that Hydra has never sent an unwilling man through that portal.” 

The words swim in her head, a brutal flashback to Ward’s taunting words as he’d forcibly taken Fitz from her grip nearly two weeks before. He’d told her, then, that Fitz’s services were required to reopen the portal, to release that Inhuman being back onto Earth and that Will’s work—his service—had been appreciated. 

It had been a very long time since Jemma believed a single word that came out of Grant Ward’s mouth, and she never thought that she would come to regret that. Grant Ward was, and continues to be, Hydra scum. Now he’s even very high-up Hydra scum. 

But there’s no getting around the fact that Ward was telling the truth. No man had ever been tricked through that portal. Will, and his entire team, had been volunteers. The thought had been tickling the back of her mind since she and Fitz had located the symbols, but now it is confirmed. No longer a thought, but a fact. Will was just an instrument of Hydra itself, and the very thought of it turns her stomach so violently that she nearly wretches. Daisy has a firm hold on her arm, eyes darting around the ancient English ruins as she tries to locate an escape. 

“Where is Fitz?” Jemma hisses. “What have you done with him?” 

Ward smirks, scratching at his eyebrow and glancing up at Jemma. He, Gideon, Jemma, and Daisy are the only ones in the room. Their rogue mission to rescue Fitz will certainly land them in hot water with the Director (and perhaps even more so with May and Bobbi) but they’d seen their opportunity and they’d taken it. “I could tell you myself, but I think there might be a better person for the job.” 

It feels so rehearsed and Daisy must think so too, because she growls and pushes herself further in front of Jemma. 

“If there’s a point to this, Ward, you should really get to it.” 

Jemma’s heart stops when Will emerges from the shadows. He’s not dirty anymore and he looks so much older than she ever remembered him being on Maveth. 

“Jemma, please, let me explain—“ 

“There’s nothing to explain,” Jemma spits. She shoves herself forward again, voice rising to a nearly hysterical level. “You weren’t helping me. You weren’t trying to find our way home, you wanted to keep me there the entire time, and when Fitz came—when Fitz came, you knew you had your chance to unleash that monster on the world.” 

Will looks at her grimly. “If you understood the peace that he can bring, you would know why I did this.” 

“I don’t care why!” Jemma shouts. “You’re a monster.” The sound echoes off of the ancient stone walls surrounding them. “I’m going to ask one more time, where is Fitz?” 

Will gulps. “Maveth is still distrustful of Earth. Until he’s willing to return, there has to be a servant on the planet.” 

Jemma has two PhDs, and it doesn’t take her very long to put the puzzle together. “What have you done to Fitz?” 

Will doesn’t answer her. Ward just watches on, his arrogance replaced with a morbid kind of curiosity that often adorns the faces of those who drive slowly past the carnage of a car accident. The kind of car accident that you just know, intuitively, nobody walked away from. 

She repeats herself, breathes out the words like they’re her last ones, and deep down in her core it feels like they might be. After everything she’d put him through, everything that he had done for her and she had done for him, all of the problems that they had managed to fix together—and here they are. 

It’s as though something animal takes over her very soul. A strength she’d never possessed surges through her and Daisy reacts quickly, quaking their opponents back as Jemma darts for the solidly rock Monolith that stands, proud and taunting, behind the only two people that Jemma has ever wished dead. 

She vaguely registers Ward drawing a gun on Daisy, and her friend simply laughing in his face as she uses vibrations to dismantle it. He resorts to attacking her with his bare hands. 

This is what it comes to. Jemma, Skye, and Ward—and Fitz, too, because ultimately this entire battle is for him. The original Bus team, the four kids who journeyed into mystery, all sharp shards and resentment and new names. Part of her should have expected this, that it would all come down to them. 

Jemma screams, the sound ripping from her throat as she kicks at the rock. Broken toes will be dealt with later. Right now, the only thing that she can focus on is the other half of her soul, stranded on a desolate planet with a powerful Inhuman force. Trapped there by a man she trusted, a man that she broke Fitz’s heart for. 

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?” she screeches. “WHAT DID YOU DO? GIVE HIM BACK!” 

Will moves to restrain her and she grabs the knife strapped to his leg, holding it immediately at his throat. It is a painful reminder of the night she had woken stabbing at air, the only possible comfort to calm her pounding heart being Fitz’s warmth so close she could finally touch him. 

“Don’t you dare touch me,” she hisses. “Tell me exactly what you did to him.” 

Will looks to Ward for an explanation, but the other man is too busy trying to fight off the combined force of their hacker consultant-turned-super hero. Gideon, meanwhile, observes coolly from a safe distance. 

“After Ward got ahold of him, he forced him to reopen the portal using bits of pieces of the portal’s materials that we had.” 

She sees red. She’d thought she wanted to kill Ward before, even felt very little guilt for killing Bakshi, and for a moment all she wants is to stab this knife through Will Daniels’ chest. 

The only thing holding her back is that he has information that she needs. Her stomach rolls at the thought of the days they’d spent together on that planet, of the intimacy and the domesticity. She’s never hated herself more than she has in this moment, but there isn’t any time for it. She needs to get Fitz back, or she needs to get to that planet with him, and if living out the rest of her days in that horrible place will mean dying by his side then she’s okay with that.

“How did he open it?” Jemma demands. Daisy shouts her name and she quickly ducks down, raising her eyes just enough to see Ward fly through the air and collide with one of the crumbling castle walls. 

“I don’t know!” Will explodes. “I was still on the other side, Jemma. He got tossed through and I waited long enough to see that Maveth wasn’t coming.” 

“And then you left,” Jemma deduces. “You walked right back onto Earth and left Fitz there, left him as some blood sacrifice.” 

She looks up into Will’s eyes that had once brought her comfort and hope. Now her blood runs cold and she lowers the knife in her hand slowly. He looks relieved by whatever he sees in her face but he’s mistaken. She musters up all of her strength and punches him across the jaw. 

“Daisy, we need to get it back into the well!” Jemma screams. “I need to re-open this portal.” 

“Jemma, if we open this…” Daisy pants. Ward slowly drags himself to his feet and her eyes remain trained on her former S.O. 

“Maveth may come through,” she finishes. “Yes. But Fitz is over there. We’ve got to get him back. I have to get him back.” 

Daisy nods resolutely, remembering a time where the scientists’ roles were reversed. There will be no stopping Jemma Simmons, just as they’d had no real chance at keeping Fitz from his suicide missions in his single-minded goal to get Jemma back. She throws her hands forward, concentrating a strong, nearly painful stream of vibrations against the reconstructed Monolith. It slides slowly, loudly, backward until it lands inside the hole with an echoing thud. 

“I can’t let you do this, Skye,” Ward says. He approaches her cautiously, and her head whips to him with furious eyes alight. 

“That’s Agent Johnson to you,” she bites out. Her hand flies out to shoot him back once again. “Or Quake, if you’d prefer.” 

Gideon chuckles, low and sadistic. “Ward was right to tell me not to underestimate the two of you. Love is a very powerful motivator, second only to fear.” 

Jemma huffs and draws her gun from its holster, pointing it at Gideon. “Daisy, would you please shut him up so we can get on with it? We’re running out of time.” 

“Maveth has probably taken him over already,” Gideon taunts. “Agent Fitz was temperamental, controlled by emotion. Exactly the kind of man that Maveth would need, not as a servant, but as a power source.” 

Daisy knocks him unconscious immediately, turning her attention back to the Monolith. She and Jemma rush to it, standing over it and staring at it’s rapidly changing form, from solid to liquid and back again. 

“I can’t keep it open long,” Daisy warns. “We almost lost Fitz, last time. We don’t have a cord—“ 

“I can do this,” Jemma insists. “Daisy, please.” 

Her voice breaks and she meets Daisy’s eyes with her own nearly spilling tears down her cheeks. Daisy draws in a shaking breath and then nods, forcing her hands out with her face screwed shut. As soon as her vibrations make contact with the rock, the screeching sound begins and it feels like her skull is being cracked open. 

With no hesitation, Jemma leaps. 

“JEMMA!” Will shouts. He moves toward the portal, standing where Jemma had just been. If Daisy’s focus wasn’t so strained already, she would use what little energy she has left to snap his neck. That’s not an option, though; every cell of her body and every inch of her soul is focused on keeping this portal open as long as possible. 

Ward moves to stop her, but Gideon holds up a hand to halt him. “Perhaps Maveth will be ready now.” 

*** 

On the other side, Jemma lands on the familiar blue-tinted dirt and gasps as the wind is knocked from her lungs. She immediately scrambles to her feet, drawing in a heavily oxygenated breath. 

“FITZ!” she shouts. “FITZ!” 

Her eyes search for him in the swirling dust, and she stumbles toward the rock where she had once left her own necklace. 

His phone. 

She quickly grabs it and enters his passcode, squinting against the winds blurring her eyesight. It’s open to his pictures and she clicks the most recent, one that clearly shows him on the planet. 

“Hi Jemma,” he croaks. “I have to move. It’s coming for me. I probably won’t—probably won’t get a chance to see you again. Some curse, huh?” 

His voice cracks and Jemma’s throat tightens painfully. 

“I don’t regret a second. I need you to know that. They gave me the choice, to go through myself or to wait until they brought you to it, and Jemma, I made the right call. I need you to believe that. I’m always—we’re—we’re psychically linked. That won’t change, whatever happens to me here. If you find this, just know that you were always more than that. If you haven’t figured it out already, please, don’t—you can’t trust Will. And I’m not saying that because I love you and you love him, I’m saying it because he’s Hydra, Jemma, and he came here for a purpose. I still don’t—I’m not sure what it was but I’m sure I’m going to find out very soon, when this—this thing catches up to me. Be careful, Jemma.” 

He swipes at a tear below his eye and the video ends. She shoves the phone into the side of her tact vest and runs. He was right; they are psychically linked, they always have been, and she hopes with everything she has that it means he would have gone the same direction that she had when she’d been in his position. 

“FITZ! FITZ!” 

She scrambles up a ledge, trying to get a better visual. The further she gets from the portal, the calmer the winds become. Her sight becomes clearer, but there is still no sign of her partner in the desolate wasteland. 

“JEMMA?” 

The voice comes from behind her and she spins so quickly that she nearly falls off of the rock she’s perched on. 

“FITZ!” 

Clumsily and with little finesse, she manages to get down off of the rock and sprint as hard as she can toward Fitz’s prone form. He’s on his knees in the sand, fingers threaded through his curls. 

“No, no, no,” he mumbles. “No, this can’t be—no.” 

“Fitz,” Jemma gasps as she lands in front of him. She grabs at his hands, pulling them from his head and gripping them tightly in her own. “Fitz, we need to move. Daisy can’t keep the portal open up for much longer—“ 

“Not real,” he croaks. “Not real.” 

“Fitz, I am real,” she pleads. Her hands move to his face, angling his gaze to her face. “Please, Fitz, it’s me. I’m real. I’m here to take you home. I’m so sorry.” 

Tears chase each other over her cheeks, cutting through the dust that has already settled on her skin. Fitz’s eyes are unfocused, tinged with desperation and fear as they dart around the landscape, never settling on anything for very long. 

Taking his hand once more, she lays it against her chest, just over her heart. Her heartbeat is racing and she hopes that the thrumming of it will convince him. 

“Do you feel that?” she asks softly. “Fitz, please, we need to move.” 

His eyes begin to focus, but only slightly. They are drawn to his hand on her skin and he blinks rapidly, mouth opening and closing as he swallows thickly. She can tell that he is already suffering from dehydration. 

The broken expression on his face is nearly identical to the one that he’d worn after their kiss in the lab and it tears at her but it also gives her an idea. She slowly moves to press her mouth to his, gentle and reassuring. His lips are dry and cracked, nothing like they had been at the Playground. They don’t move in tandem with hers, either, and his hands do nothing. 

When she pulls back, she’s crying again. 

“I’m begging you, Fitz,” Jemma sobs. “We need to go. If you can’t, I’ll—I’ll stay here with you, but we’ll both die. We’ll die here, Fitz.” 

This seems to snap him out of it, at least enough that he begins to look panicked. He hauls himself slowly to his feet, dragging her with him. 

“I’ll do it again,” he murmurs to himself. “I’ll keep doing it. Death by punishment.” 

Jemma doesn’t have time to think about what that means. She’ll ask him about it when they’re safe and sound. Tugging on his hand, she runs. He trails behind her and they both slow as they approach the howling winds that surround the portal. 

It is already shrinking in size, and Jemma knows that they have to make it there. Now. 

Maveth appears in the distance, moving toward them, and Jemma pushes forward, grunting as she pulls Fitz as hard as she can to keep him by her side. 

“We’re almost there!” she yells over the noise. “Just a bit longer.” 

By some miracle, they’re able to crawl along the dirt, fingers gripping tightly to the earth beneath them. Maveth’s begins to get closer and closer, one hand reaching out in its space suit, aiming for Fitz’s leg. 

“NO!” Jemma screams. She grits her teeth, holds onto Fitz has tightly as she can, and pushes them both through the portal just as Maveth’s hand begins to close on Fitz. 

They shoot out onto the floor of the castle, gasping desperately. Fitz reaches for her blindly, eyes wild and terrified, but she has one last thing to do before she can comfort him. 

Grabbing her gun once more, she sits up straight enough to aim her weapon at Will. 

“DAISY, KEEP IT OPEN!” 

Daisy lets out a shout of pain but nods.

“Wait!” Ward shouts. 

Jemma Simmons hasn’t taken orders from Grant Ward in years. She’s not going to start now. 

Will stares back her, eyes wide. “Jemma, please, think about what you’re doing.” 

“I have thought about it,” she replies. Her finger presses down on the trigger and the bullet enters his leg. He releases a strangled cry of pain before he falls backward into the barely-open portal. 

The hand of an astronaut can barely be glimpsed through its murky depths. 

And then Daisy falls back, blood seeping from his nose. Her hands raise to her head and she moans weakly, still searching for her weapon at her side. Ward and Gideon exchange looks with tight jaws.

“If I know SHIELD,” Ward begins, “then it won’t be long until—“ 

“Until the Cavalry arrives?” May finishes. Bobbi stands beside her, batons at the ready before her eyes fall on her teammates and their positions on the ground. May nods at her to indicate that she can handle the situation and Coulson steps out of the shadows, Hunter and Mack flanking him on either side. 

“Question,” Coulson says with a tight-lipped smile. “What happens if I cut off two heads?” 

*** 

Jemma bustles nervously around the module, despite it’s tiny size. Bobbi watches her pace from the doorway and lets out a small snort of laughter. Jemma freezes and glares at her. 

“What?” 

“Nothing. You just—this is basically exactly what Fitz did.” 

Jemma winces, licking her lips and redirecting her gaze to where Fitz lays, sleeping on the cot. She falls heavily into the chair beside him and puts her hands over her face. 

“I did this to him,” Jemma whimpers. “Tore him apart just so that he could try to sacrifice himself for me.” 

“There was no way you could have known that Will was—“ 

“Yes there was!” Jemma protests hotly. “As soon as Fitz started putting together those symbols, I should have put the pieces together. I was so blinded by—by what I thought was—“ 

Her voice fails her after that, and Bobbi places a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You’re not the first agent to have this happen. And you won’t be the last.” 

“When Daisy realized that Ward might be Hydra, she immediately accepted it,” Jemma mumbles angrily. “I was so stupid. So blind, and at what cost? It nearly cost Fitz his life, and it cost me—it cost me my chance.” 

Bobbi looks at her incredulously. “You really are stupid if you think that your chance with Fitz is over.” 

“It should be,” Jemma retorts miserably. “He sacrificed so much for me, has nearly died for me so many times, just for me to insist on rescuing a man who I had no business trying to bring back here.” 

“Love doesn’t work that way,” Bobbi says simply. “It’s not about keeping score. I tried it that way once and it ended in divorce. We both drowned in our guilt over what we couldn’t do for each other. Sometimes you just have to be grateful for the times you manage to save him, and that’s what you did today.” 

She squeezes her shoulder and then leaves Jemma alone with her thoughts. She scoots closer to Fitz and tentatively grasps at his hand. As soon as she feels his skin on hers, she drops her forehead to touch against their entwined fingers. 

“I’m so sorry, Fitz,” she sniffs. “You’re safe now. I promise.” 

He stirs and her head flies up to stare him with wide, hopeful eyes. 

“’Ema?” he mumbles. 

“Yes, Fitz, it’s me,” she confirms through a beaming smile. “We’re on Zephyr One.” 

He attempts to sit up and groans, grasping at his head. “Bloody hell.” 

She makes a tutting noise and lowers him back down. “You need to stay put, Fitz. Whatever Maveth—that thing—did to you, it was different than my experience and we need to monitor you carefully.” 

He shuts his eyes at the mention of the blue planet, taking a steadying breath. “Okay.” 

She sits on the tiny bit of available space on the mattress and leans over him, threading her hands through his hair comfortingly, the way she’d seen his mother do when he’d had his appendix removed at the Academy. His mum had gotten on the first plane out of Glasgow (emptying her savings to do so) and insisted that Jemma get some rest after her constant vigil at Fitz’s bedside once she’d arrived. 

“What happened to—“ 

“I sent him back through the portal,” Jemma answers. He stiffens. 

“You did what?” 

“I shot him,” she says simply, as though it’s an every day occurrence to a shoot a man you once had a relationship with. “And the force made him fall back into the portal where he belongs.” 

Fitz’s body becomes far less tense. “So you know he was—“ 

“—Hydra, yes. Speaking of, I rescued your phone. I found it when I landed.” 

His eyes fly open again. “I’m going to need that back.” 

Her brow furrows. “Well, that’s why I brought it. I know you have a good deal of specs on there for—“ 

“Yes. Right. Specs.” 

Jemma knows when Fitz is lying, but she doesn’t have the energy to care, not when he’s alive and breathing and speaking. 

“If I had put it together sooner—“ 

“Jemma , please. There’s plenty of time for your absurd speculations, but right now my head really bloody hurts.” 

She jumps up to get him some medication, rambling apologies and platitudes. She helps him swallow the pills and settles him back down. 

“You kissed me,” he says. She takes in a sharp breath. 

“I did.” 

“Why?” 

“I needed you to know that I was real. You didn’t seem to believe me.” 

“Maveth, I think is what you called it. It started warping my mind. Kept making me think you were there with me and that we were going home. Soon as we’d get to the portal, you’d leave me behind.” 

Tears spring immediately to her eyes and she throws herself on top of his body. He lets out a puff of startled air but she tightens her grip on him. 

“I would never.” 

“So you wanted to prove something,” he says, voice muffled by her hair in his face. 

“Yes but I also wanted to. I’ve missed you so much, I’ve been so worried and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what happened in the lab that day.” 

He weakly tries to push her off of him and she complies, face crinkled in concern. She looks like she’s waiting for a rejection, and rejecting Jemma is the only thing Fitz has ever concerned himself truly abysmal at.

He tugs her down again to meet her soft lips with his cracked ones. There’s no desperation, no taste of goodbye in it this time. It feels like relief and care and finality, all in one. The period at the end of a very, very long sentence. She pulls back and brushes her nose against his. 

“Even if he hadn’t been Hydra, I’d still have chosen you.” 

He doesn’t look like he believes her, not yet, but he nods slightly anyway. She opens her mouth to launch into a lengthy presentation of why, but he still looks so exhausted and this is just the beginning of the road for them. She’ll have the time to explain herself later, to tell him about all the bits of the equation that make him her perfect answer. 

For now, she presses a kiss to his forehead and continues to run her hand over his hair. He deserves this, and all she wants is to give him what he deserves for as long as he’ll let her.


End file.
